Pizza, cocktails, live music, and a beginner-friendly bread-making class—all wrapped up in a two-night stay at a scenic roadside resort. This is just a handful of goodies and events that attendees of Cuyama Buckhorn’s Wild Flour Celebration can expect.
This year’s weekend-long celebration—which also includes a four-course farm-to-table dinner, mead tastings, and more—marks the second event of its kind for Cuyama Buckhorn. This year was originally intended to mark the venue’s third outing, explained Savannah Fox, Cuyama Buckhorn’s marketing and events manager.
The first iteration of the celebration “was scheduled for April 2020 but ended up being postponed due to the pandemic,” said Fox, who started working with Cuyama Buckhorn in 2018.
Fox said that the concept for the Wild Flour Celebration began soon after she joined the resort, “in early conversations about our plans for programming the property.” The initial idea was to host a food-centric event during the spring, while also celebrating the Cuyama Valley’s seasonal blooms.
“We wanted to provide people with the opportunity to get out and explore our valley to see our blooming spring wildflowers,” with a “culinary education component” as well, Fox said.
With that goal in mind, someone pitched a perfectly punny event title, which Fox can’t take credit for.
“Our brilliant partner, Trisha Cole, who assists with our marketing efforts, came up with the clever name for this event, with the idea of blending flowers and flour for a full culinary experience,” Fox said.
“Our owner, Ferial Sadeghian, is incredibly passionate about food, cooking, and sourcing, and has always had the vision to center our programming around food and specifically culinary education,” Fox continued, adding that the first Wild Flour Celebration—rescheduled to 2021—featured culinary workshops, including a sourdough bread-making class led by Laura Journeys, of Bakers Outpost in Bakersfield.
This year’s event includes a bread-making course of a different variety, focaccia, hosted by Oat Bakery, an artisan bakery based in Santa Barbara. Fox described the class as “suitable for all baking levels” and said that participants of the workshop “will walk away with the bread they’ve created themselves.”
The focaccia class is scheduled for Saturday, April 9, but the Wild Flour Celebration kicks off the night before, with a pizza party catered by Pinyon Ojai on Friday, April 8. Live music will be provided by country artist Victoria Bailey during the party.
The following day begins with the bread workshop and is followed by a special cocktail hour featuring libations from the Ventura Spirits Company and mead tastings hosted by Cuyama Beverage Co.
“The most fulfilling part of curating these events is the opportunity to highlight incredible people and organizations in the culinary scene who are supporting local and sustainable food systems and the amazing relationships and partnerships that have been formed along the way,” Fox said.
Later on Saturday evening, attendees can look forward to enjoying a four-course farm-to-table dinner prepared by the Buckhorn Restaurant’s executive chef, Daniel Horn. The dinner begins with a warm farro salad with asparagus, pistachio, flowers, and feta, followed by a millet, cauliflower, and pea fritter with citrus yogurt, spinach salad, and flowers.
Guests have three choices to pick from when it comes to the third course: a seared yellowtail served over cold buckwheat noodles, snap peas, carrot, seaweed vinaigrette, and flowers; roasted rack of lamb with blue corn grits, sautéed kale, rosemary gremolata, flowers; or roasted mushroom with the same sides featured with the rack of lamb.
“You really can’t go wrong,” said Fox, who would be happy with any of the three options, although she’d feel inclined to pick one of the latter two for one specific side dish.
“I have to say the blue corn grits from Capay Mills are incredible, although I may be biased, as my family is from the South and I have grown up with and love grits,” Fox said.
Send gritty comments to Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood at [email protected].
